


Mother

by lurker_writes



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-13 22:07:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7987876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurker_writes/pseuds/lurker_writes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The confrontation in the basement leaves a different body to bury. A different scientist returns to Midgar. The more things change...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A series of short stories in an AU where Lucrecia is the scientist to survive Project S. Actual number of chapters... uncertain. I have a plan. Hopefully it goes better than poor Vincent's.

Lucrecia came running when she heard the gunshot, as fast as she could, her hand clutched under her round belly. She took in the scene quickly. Her surprise lent her some sorely needed detachment.

Hojo, slumped back in his chair. Blood on his shirt. Hole in his chest.

Vincent, standing over him, sidearm still raised.

She approached Hojo with steps that faltered at her unsteady, swollen ankles, and wondered if she should amend that, ‘she approached Hojo’s body.’ But no, he was alive. Tiny puffs of blood-scented breath escaped him. His eyes rolled toward her in their sockets, glassy behind his eternally smudged spectacles. There was another gun slipping out of his hand as his fingers lost the ability to grip.

“You shot him…” Lucrecia said; not quite a question, not quite an accusation.

“What he has planned…” Vincent lowered his gun, and briefly closed his striking eyes. “We have to move quick to get ahead of Shinra, but… You can end the experiment now, Lucrecia. I’ll keep you safe.”

The Experiment.

One of Lucrecia’s hands rubbed over her belly. She could end The Experiment. The one that gave her horrific visions, that left Hojo counting pills and bandaging her wrists and having violent shouting matches with her late at night, when she woke up in a cold sweat and grabbed at something, anything to stab into the creature incubating inside her and rapidly driving her mad. The one that was _her son_.

“Oh, Vincent.” Lucrecia finally had a smile for him, tearful and radiant and bitter.

He collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, confusion still clear on what was left of his formerly handsome face.

Lucrecia also had Hojo’s gun in her hand. She sat it on the paper-strewn desktop, amid the flecks of blood and… tissue. It was the nicest thing she could have done for Vincent, really. A Turk that betrayed the company would survive precisely long enough to regret it, and no longer.

One arm at a time, while the other grabbed at anything within reach for balance, Lucrecia stripped off her lab coat. She pressed it to Hojo’s bleeding chest with one hand, and reached for the radio with the other. She had to call the incident in, of course, but help wouldn’t arrive to save either of them in time.

‘ _Lu…_ ’ Hojo mouthed, inaudible over the pops and gurgles of his own labored breathing. ‘ _Lu… Lu…_ ’

She pressed harder.

There was, she supposed, a chance for one of them… The Experiment turned restlessly in her belly. Her precious child, her wretched little parasite.

Yes, it was only fair. She’d given her body over to Hojo’s pet project, hadn’t she, no matter how he’d criticized her own work? It would only be right for her husband to do the same. That was why they agreed to this dysfunctional sham of a marriage, after all: the mutual pursuit of knowledge.

Vincent still hadn’t moved. Apparently, he’d been lying: she was a damn good shot.

‘ _Lu… Lu… Lu…_ ’ Hojo desperately stuttered.

Scientific Progress kicked her in the kidney from inside.

She sat down the radio, and patted over her everted navel. “It’s alright, Sephiroth,” she soothed. “Daddy’s going to help Mommy with a very important experiment.”  



	2. Chapter 2

“—And now he’s run off with some woman.” Lucrecia finished her tale of departmental reshuffling woes. Her husband, floating in a tank of concentrated mako, naturally did not answer.

She brushed crumbs off of her skirt and folded her sandwich wrapper. There was a spot of mayonnaise on her blouse. Probably mayonnaise. Possibly fat from that last dissection. _Hopefully_ mayonnaise.

“Well, it’s been lovely talking at you; but I’m afraid some of us do have to _conduct_ experiments to earn our keep. Successful ones.”

She was sure that, eventually, she would forgive Hojo for never quite making it back to consciousness. He’d been good enough to leave her all the credit for the success of Sephiroth – and what a success that child was. Still. Sephiroth was _the boys’_ dream. Her dream was now a dusty publication on the bottom shelf – ‘Materia and Consciousness: Chaos Theory, by _Dr._ L Crescent’ – and a comatose partner in a dusty mako pod.

Anyway, materia implantation had very few safe and practical applications. Shinra wasn’t much interested; all he cared about was mako, mako, and the means to get more mako.

She slid off the edge of the table she’d perched on, retrieved her lab coat from the hook by the door –

–and nearly tripped over a silver-haired roadblock, aged 4 years and 7 months. Sephiroth jumped up off the floor and raised his arms to her, with an imploring ‘ _hnnh_.’

She ruffled his hair. “My darling, you are much too big to be picked up now. Hold Mommy’s hand instead.”

His shoulders drooped and he twisted away, but he held one hand out with a muttered, “‘Kay…”

She took it – and her lip curled in involuntary disgust. “You’re sticky. What have you gotten into that’s sticky? You didn’t break another specimen jar, did you?”

“Marta gave me a honey bread,” he mumbled. It was always mutters and mumbles and whispers with him. He tried to close the hand she was holding into a fist within her grasp.

“That is _not_ on your approved diet.” She curled her hand around his tighter, to stop his fidgeting. “No more honey bread for you.”

He fell a couple steps behind her, dragging at her arm. “It was really good, though…” he said to himself in a low whine.

She didn’t care. He had strict nutritional requirements, and no wiggle room in them for empty treats. _Marta_ didn’t have to deal with him at night if he started crying because he’d missed his calcium and potassium requirements and his bones ached and everything was cramping.

They reached her office shortly. It was moving further and further out of the warren of the labs with every milestone Sephiroth passed. Now, with Gast on the run… Well. She expected she wouldn’t be moving too many more times.

She bent down and kissed the top of Sephiroth’s head. “Go wash up, and then you come right back here to do your lessons.”

He nodded mutely.

She ruffled his hair one more time before she left. “That’s my clever boy. Mommy has to go back to work, so you behave.”

He stood in the doorway and watched her walk back into the labs.

 

* * *

 

She could have just left Gast to the Turks. It would have been much simpler. She wouldn’t have had to postpone several important tests, or leave Sephiroth in the support staff’s dubious care, or ride a helicopter out to the frozen ends of nowhere.

Unfortunately, she no longer quite trusted Turks – to do their job _or_ with her safety – which was why she had a ‘welcome to the board’ present from Scarlet holstered under her parka. It was, admittedly, slightly preemptive – but she _was_ going to be on the board at the conclusion of this trip.

She would. There was no other option.

She ordered her escort to stand down and surround the building. There was no reason to be brutes about this. She knocked on the door like a civilized person, and waited.

She didn’t have to wait long. The _former_ director of ShinRa’s science division and Project S opened the door, pale-faced and sweating despite the below-freezing weather.

“Lucrecia…” he said, shaky and hesitant.

She gave him her new smile, the one she’d been practicing in meetings and boardrooms since he disappeared. “Goodbye, Professor Gast.”

And in his moment of confusion, she shot him point blank in the chest.

He really should have known, but perhaps Gast Faremis hadn’t been so brilliant after all. It was no secret between them, what happened to the last man that instructed her to terminate Project S.

There was a woman screaming in the house. The _alleged_ Ancient, no doubt. She stepped daintily over the body in the doorway, intent on seeing for herself.

“You killed him!” the woman hissed, as Lucrecia came into her view.

Lucrecia lowered her gun, and gave the other woman a bitter, humorless smile. “He threatened my child.”

“Your child. That… that thing they made was a mistake,” the Ancient pleaded.

“That _they_ made?” Lucrecia scoffed. “ _I_ grew Sephiroth in _my_ body, while the men argued over procedure and credit. _I_ birthed him and nurtured him and raised him. Everything that he is, came from me.”

“Not everything. The disease – it’s not too late.” The Ancient was shaking. Desperate.

Lucrecia had been that way, once.

“Yes, the _disease_. JENOVA.” She shook her head. It was funny, really. “He got that from me, too.”

Realisation followed by horror blossomed in the Ancient’s bright grass-green eyes. She gasped – and was drowned out, by a newborn’s feeble, pleading cries.

“Ah,” Lucrecia said. “So that’s why he ran.”

“Please,” the Ancient whispered. “Please just let us go. She’s all I have. We’re all that’s left.”

“A little girl,” Lucrecia said, half to herself. “How wonderful.”

“Please. I will do anything.”

And she would, Lucrecia knew it. Lucrecia killed for the little monster she’d incubated inside her, and now every petname, every cuddle, every painful procedure and strict rule was an act of desperate war against the killer her fevered brain had dreamed up. If it made him safe, if it made him better, she would become so much worse…

And if she returned to Midgar with even the slightest reason to give Hollander control over her labs, it would all be for nothing. He would rip her boy apart in revenge for his own sloppy work. If Sephiroth _survived_ any length of time as Hollander’s specimen…

She wouldn’t let that happen. She would keep them safe. She would do _anything_ .

“I know you will. That’s the problem.”

The shot hit true. The Ancient fell to the floor. A materia rolled out of her hand, still glowing and fizzling with power. She choked on a sob.

A man, Lucrecia reflected, would probably let her live. One little woman, what trouble could she be?

“What is your name?” she asked.

“I-ifalna.”

One woman, alone and angry and with every reason for revenge.

“She’ll know it,” Lucrecia promised. She gave Ifalna an honor she hadn’t spared for any of the men who’d stood in her way – a second bullet.

The baby was still wailing, her cries sharp and breathlessly sporadic. Lucrecia holstered her gun and picked her way to the crib, over the spreading bloodstains.

A baby Ancient – half an Ancient, at best; but still a concern. Shinra’s obsession with the Promised Land was… all-consuming. Would he shove aside Sephiroth, a true miracle of science, for Gast’s lucky accident?

She was red-faced and hideous, Gast’s little girl, as all newborns were; but there were little wisps of brown curls growing on her head. Lucrecia touched her own hair, falling wavy over her shoulder, and then the girl’s.

Just a baby.

‘ _What if_ …’ she wondered.

What if she succeeded, where Hollander had failed? What if she made a successful splice? She had all of Hojo and Gast’s notes. She had all of her own excruciating memories of the procedures. And… she had Sephiroth, healthy and stable and perfect.

He could use some company, her special little boy.

Lucrecia picked the fussing baby up, and rocked her gently. There was a name picked out in embroidery, at the corner of her blanket. ‘ _Aerith_ ,’ surrounded by scrollwork leaves and delicate flowers. It was the last work of a skilled pair of hands.

“Aerith.” The baby fussed and squirmed. Lucrecia caught one of her tiny fists and kissed her little curled fingers. “Well, little blossom. I think it’s time to go home.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains obliquely described eye trauma, and allusions to treating two children like a species survival program. If you find either of those things upsetting, please consider this your warning.

Lucrecia rested her head in her hand, and massaged her temple with her thumb. She sighed, but the sharp mako-and-disinfectant stench of the labs only worsened her headache.

Aerith was ‘missing’ again.

Aerith seemed to spend a full three quarters of her life ‘missing’ – and Lucrecia knew that this time, just like every other, if her useless staff had bothered to look before running to her there would be no problem to report. Aerith was never actually missing. Aerith was merely never where she was supposed to be, and in a very predictable and consistent location instead.

“And you checked with Sephiroth?” she asked blandly.

The technician cringed, and inadvertently marked himself for transfer to a position in which he could be useful, like mindlessly pushing the same button for eight hours a day in one of Scarlet’s factories.

She shook her head and stood. Her pen did not clatter to her desk, but was laid with delicacy and precision back into its holder. She straightened the edges of some papers before she spoke. “I am sure,” she said with generosity she certainly did not feel, “that you only wanted to inform me as quickly as you could; but I can promise you, she is with Sephiroth. She is always with Sephiroth. She is with Sephiroth so often that, were she to actually _go missing_ , the first person I would expect to notice… is Sephiroth.”

The soon-to-be-former technician opened his mouth and said nothing, wearing a concerned, vaguely constipated expression.

“I believe there is, in fact, a note on her files. I seem to recall writing it. Now, let me think, what did it say…? Ah, yes. ‘ _In the event S-02 does not arrive to her scheduled lessons or procedures, please consult the schedule in file S-01 and search that location first._ ’ Have you… perhaps not read her file recently, for some reason?” Lucrecia glanced up from locking her top drawer and waited.

He fidgeted in place like a guilty child.

She waited.

“Dr. Crescent…” he whispered. “We… I… I don’t want to go into a room with him.”

Lucrecia smiled. “I don’t think you’ll need to worry about it.”

 

* * *

 

Throughout the department, such fuss was made about The Incident that one might take it as a sign the world was ending.

Privately, Lucrecia could admit that she, too, had experienced a moment when her pulse raced and her heart seemed to jump into her throat. Sephiroth – her baby was such a _good_ boy; always docile and agreeable, never a complaint.

To think that he’d… well. They were never going to get all the shards of scalpel out of that man’s eye socket; he would likely have been very concerned, had he lived long enough. The thought still raised an image in her mind, a spectre in flames…

Or it had, before she’d found out _exactly_ what her boy had done.

And then old Shinra found out, and gave her entirely new reasons to worry...

 

* * *

 

Aerith was, predictably, stuck fast to Sephiroth’s side. Separating them was a constant and, Lucrecia suspected, pointless struggle. JENOVA had proved such an effective carrier – first at splicing Sephiroth’s stabilized genes into Aerith in vivo, and then at a cross-splice Lucrecia still couldn’t quite believe she’d dared attempt – that the only result _anyone_ could be certain of is that both were now genetically more Cetra than they’d been before the attempt. The… side effects… of two such specimens in close proximity were still a matter of study and speculation.

And they were _always_ in close proximity when left to their own devices. They found each other so accurately and unerringly that it was as if they had some means of communication, some additional sense, that was known to them alone. Most of her department found it unnerving. Shinra had started to make pleased – _revolting_ – comments about having ‘a breeding pair.’

Lucrecia made every effort to keep him away, while still toiling under his yoke. They were _children_. Sephiroth was barely ten. Aerith was _five_. Old man Shinra was, as ever, a filthy pig.

Which was why Lucrecia’s heart sank to see the greedy bastard leaned against the edge of the table where Sephiroth mostly neglected his lessons while Aerith took up increasing fractions of his chair, tiny next to him but as irrepressible as tectonic movement. Both of them blinked inattentively up at Shinra, two perfectly matching pairs of deep green cats’ eyes.

He chuckled, false avuncularity like an oily film on top of his voice. “I’m sure you can see why I’m worried, my boy. It was all very shocking. Tell me one more time, why did you…?”

“Aerith wasn’t happy,” Sephiroth replied tonelessly. “She wanted him to stop,”

Aerith pushed against Sephiroth’s side and tugged his arm tighter over her shoulders, until texture was the only way to tell apart their pale hair where it fell, intermingled, over her.

“Wasn’t it a bit extreme?” Shinra prodded.

Lucrecia’s lips pursed in disgust, and she clenched her hand on the door jamb. He didn’t care. He cared about that dead pig even less than she did. Still, she didn’t dare interrupt.

“He was hurting her,” Sephiroth said in that same bland non-tone. “He made a bruise on her arm. She wanted him to stop. I told him to stop.”

It was the truth. The cameras recording the experiment all corroborated it. Sephiroth told the assistant that day to stop. And when he didn’t, Sephiroth – who allowed himself to be moved about like a ragdoll and endured all manner of needlesticks and tissue samples without complaint – picked up a scalpel, and inserted it into the man’s eye with… excessive force.

“So you just wanted to protect your little friend,” Shinra said, with twice the usual ooze.

“He was hurting her.” In _any_ other situation, it would have been humorous, little Sephiroth speaking to a grown man like he was a particularly dim child.

Not in this one. This had gone on long enough.

“President Shinra,” Lucrecia said, almost entirely free of the quaver that anger had once made completely steal her voice. “If there are any further concerns regarding the… matter… I do believe they should be brought to me, as both the head of the department and as his parent.”

Shinra turned that greasy, revolting smile on to her instead. “Yes,” he mused. “As his… parent.”

Lucrecia’s stomach turned. He wouldn’t dare play that card now, not right in front of the children – but it was Shinra. Of course he would. She might be Sephiroth’s mother, but Shinra _owned_ him. Medical debts, cell lines, proprietary technology…

“You know, we just aren’t making much progress on this little Promised Land project of ours,” Shinra continued. “And most of it is from Aerith. I was only wondering if Sephiroth might like to try his hand at something new – something _he’s_ good at. It turns out, he’s a very strong young man.”

Man in the flames, sad and furious; death and fire and revenge. Lucrecia clenched her teeth against the decade old nightmares that still flashed through her mind. “He is only a child, sir.”

“Learning new skills takes time,” Shinra said, with a shark-like smile and such a force of fake jocularity that it made her blood run cold. “What do you say, Sephiroth? Would you like to learn how to protect people?”

“ _Sir_ —” Lucrecia’s voice was rising in desperation.

“Yes,” Sephiroth said, into a very sudden silence.

Shinra laughed, loud and greedy and triumphant. He leaned down and clapped Sephiroth on the shoulder a couple times. “So that’s settled. I’ll get it all arranged for you, my boy – and I’m sure your mother will help.”

Lucrecia was frozen. Yes, she would help. Now, she had no other choice. She worked so hard to keep them progressing, to keep them _profitable_ , to keep them _safe_ – and all her efforts ruined, by one scalpel and one word.

Shinra oozed past her out of the room.

Sephiroth blinked placidly, with Aerith still firmly attached to his side.

The little _idiot_ couldn’t have any comprehension of what he’d just done. “We will be discussing this later,” Lucrecia managed to croak around the mass of fear and anger lodged in her throat.

Sephiroth blinked. “Yes, mother.”

She spun on her heel and left the room, before her temper got the better of her. Once outside, she leaned against the wall, her hands shaking and her eyes clenched shut. She wished she hadn’t. She wished she’d stormed away. That moment to gather herself was enough to hear a conversation not meant for her ears.

“Why did you say yes?” Aerith’s voice, high and bell-like and quavering with fear.

“Because.” Sephiroth was muffled. She could picture them – his arms wrapped around her, his face pressed into her wavy steel-grey hair. “He was hurting her.”

Dr. Lucrecia Crescent had never been seen running in the halls of the building, and she would not be seen running now, either… but it was a very brisk walk back to the privacy of her office, with her tears threatening to overflow.

 

* * *

 

“You were supposed to be here,” she told Hojo’s inert body two weeks later.

Sephiroth had just begun his military training. Shinra was making comments about ‘actions to protect company interests’ and ‘making a more affordable variation on the procedure.’

Lucrecia was beside herself, and Hojo was a body on a stainless steel dissection table. He wasn’t dead. At least she had that comfort. She had stopped him from dying. But… she’d apparently stopped him from living, too. Simultaneously, he showed absolutely no signs of cellular decay, and absolutely no signs of cellular activity. He just… was, and wasn’t. Her big triumph.

“You were supposed to be here… I’ve been counting my pills again. It was easier when you did it. I never worried about you losing track.”

She turned on the spray, to rinse away the mako. “I suppose I should have just tried to close the wound. You always said my hands were the steadiest. I had the neatest stitches. ...But a Turk knows how to shoot. You were going to die…”

She picked up a towel from the next table. There was a pile of them, next to a shirt with a dubious stain and a hideous pair of khakis and those awful scuffed shoes that he never threw out and then she couldn’t bear to throw out for him. If they were going to dump him in some basement for storage, she would at least give him the dignity of going there dressed.

“I hope you’ll forgive me, for taking that from you too… but I suppose you don’t have to worry about forgiveness anymore.”

She dried the water off his hand. Neither of them had ever bothered to wear a ring…

No. Forgiveness was hers to worry about, alone. Just like everything else.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may notice that the chapter total has changed. I was really hoping for seven, but ultimately, this little slice of misery just needed to be on its own. I...
> 
> I'm sorry.

It had been three years since Sephiroth was in Midgar.

None of Lucrecia’s efforts to stall his training, or his deployment, worked. Several of them had only been rewarded with muttering about giving the department to Hollander. Of course, that ended quickly enough; Hollander’s first, second, and third attempts at a lesser version of the S protocols produced nothing but batches of hideously deformed and vegetative monsters. It was only when he began his fourth that she agreed to the project, and cut short his efforts. She, of course, succeeded immediately. Perhaps it was her use of cultured S-line cells instead of JENOVA samples. Perhaps it was the fact that _one_ of them was careful and professional, and one of them wore bath shoes in the lab. Or perhaps it was the fact that she’d left several key steps and dosages out of her official notes on the mako infusion process, ensuring that it literally could not be done without her…

She’d had a sense of ethics once, she reflected, and then she had – made – a son; Midgar was an environment conducive to keeping only one of the two alive.

But _Midgar_ was no longer where Lucrecia had to worry about her boy dying.

She sat down her fork and stared at the breakfast she’d only pushed around her plate.

Across the table, Aerith rested her chin on her interlocked fingers. “He’s just fine, Mom.” She said the same thing every morning, had ever since he’d left. “He’ll be very happy to see you.”

“But how could you know?” Once, it had been a demand; now, Lucrecia was too weary to be more than tiredly skeptical. “They took him away much too early, Blossom. They took him away and refused to give him back.”

Aerith only smiled. “He’s coming back now, isn’t he?” she asked, much more composed than her 11 years should have lent her. “And anyway, he was never _really_ gone.” She shifted her chin to one fist, and touched the other hand to her chest. “Because he’s right here.”

Lucrecia sighed. Sentiment. Well… It was good that Aerith was still innocent enough to believe those sorts of things, she supposed. It was good that Aerith was here with her, certainly, sleeping in her home and eating at her table and still calling her ‘Mom’. If she were alone…

She wasn’t alone. And she was.

There were others depending on her. That was what mattered.

Aerith swung her feet and knocked her heels against the legs of her chair. Soon, she’d be too tall to do that. She grew fast – they’d both grown fast. Perhaps that was what Lucrecia feared most: going to greet her baby, and finding a man instead.

“Anyway,” Aerith said, drawing out the syllables in a bright sing-song. “I have a question about something much more important than _Sephiroth_.” She pointed at the scrambled eggs and underdone toast on Lucrecia’s plate. “Are you going to eat that?”

Lucrecia closed her eyes, and slid the plate across. She couldn’t help but smile.

 

* * *

 

Shinra couldn’t even find the decency to allow her to meet her baby at the helicopter, or clear her schedule so she could slip into the _press conference_ that was apparently more important than his mother. She could not meet him in the lobby, or run to the elevator as he entered or exited it.

There was, after all, no room for _sentimentality_ in business.

No, the first she saw of her boy was the moment she stepped into the exam room, to certify that he was fit for continuing service. Nurses and technicians that had been hired _after he left Midgar_ got to welcome him home before his own mother did.

She closed the door and turned around, and shock stole all the air from her lungs. _Village burning, pale-haired man furious and untouchable amidst the flames_ . But… no. He was different. His eyes were the same brilliant leaf green they’d turned after a year of transfusions from Aerith. He had freckles across his nose and forehead from all the time he must have spent outside. He was, however, _utterly enormous_.

“Hello, mother…” he said in a voice so deep she would never have recognized it for her own son’s.

She flung the clipboard of paperwork she was holding at the counter; it missed, and clattered to the floor. If she’d paid more attention, maybe she would have noticed that first time the way Sephiroth twitched at unexpected noises, or how his eyes immediately jumped to every corner of the room. She didn’t, though, because she was more concerned with crossing the room in only three steps, and throwing her arms around him – she had to go on her tiptoes!

He jerked back out of her grip as though her touch burned him.

She took half a step back and stared at him, this stranger wearing some version of her baby’s face.

“I…” Her throat burned. She was furious and she had no clue where to direct her anger. She brushed down her skirt, and didn’t meet his eyes. “Well. Let’s get you through this exam, then.”

He stared at the floor and nodded.

Every time she touched him, all of his muscles went tense. He answered only in short bursts of monosyllabic words. Sometimes, she would feel an itch on the back of her neck and glance up at him, but before their eyes could meet, he always turned away.

“Clear for duty,” were her last words before she fled the room.

She lingered at a junior’s workstation, where she’d see him coming down the hall as he left. They’d just gotten off to a bad start. She would catch him and she would… something. There must be something she could do.

Twenty full minutes later, he slunk his way, round-shouldered, out of the room.

Lucrecia fought to find so much as a single word.

“Sephiroth!” Marta bustled past her, arms flung wide. She was nearly as gray-haired as him, now.

He jumped like a startled cat. Lucrecia had just a second, staring at his wide, materia-bright eyes – terrified.

“New uniform,” he grunted, and took off toward the stairwell with a stride neither of them could hope to match.

 

* * *

 

Lucrecia couldn’t find the fortitude to face him again that day. He made himself so scarce, she wondered why she bothered to worry about it. He was… was probably making new living arrangements with Shinra even while she sat there and fussed.

Still…

She wrote a note and placed a key on top of it, before she left her office for the evening. Just… just in case.

Aerith was completely unperturbed when they left the building alone.

Lucrecia swallowed a burst of fury so sudden and so strong that she fished in her purse and pulled out her little leather-bound schedule. She flipped through it with all the nonchalance she could feign – very little – and stopped on that day. She… oh. Equally nonchalantly, she pulled out the little rattling tin she kept in the side pocket. This was how one survived in a crucible like ShinRa; learning to disguise mood stabilizers as breath mints.

They were halfway through a lackluster takeout dinner when the lock turned.

Aerith flung herself out of her seat and into Sephiroth’s arms – open, and waiting unflinchingly to catch her. He swung her off her feet and let them dangle, while he pressed his nose into the wild riot of her hair.

Wordlessly, Lucrecia pushed her box of food away and tiptoed out of the room. She did not mean to slam her bedroom door, but she did. The boom echoed down the hallway and reverberated around all the empty, shadowy places in her head.

Her baby boy. How many people had she _killed_ for her boy, and now he couldn’t even—

She collapsed just a few feet inside the door, and pressed her fist to her face to muffle her sobs. She had no idea how long she cried for. _Hours_. Longer than she had in years and years, since she’d given birth.

Occasionally, her frantic mind imagined a prickle on the back of her neck, a shadow in the strip of light under her door. She bit her fist and held her breath until it went away.

Sephiroth was not there in the morning. His key was, attached to a battered charm she’d never seen before.

Aerith pushed it listlessly around the table with one finger. “He said he had to go…”

Lucrecia snatched it from her with such speed and fury that Aerith’s chair skidded noisily back across the vinyl flooring. She clutched it in her fist until she felt the teeth leaving raw imprints in the heel of her palm.

When she finally escaped into the solitary sanctuary of her office, she flung the cursed thing into a side drawer and tried desperately to forget about it. It was only three days later, when her volcanic anger finally cooled into grief, that she pulled it out and held it in her palm. It wasn’t a charm, she realized. It was a little bag of stiffened brocade, stained in one corner with what appeared to be blood. The fabric had gotten a bit brittle, after being exposed to the elements of a war zone. Gingerly, she eased it open…

...and pulled out a tiny lock of chestnut hair; about an inch and a half long, a bit frayed at one end.

If her heart failed to ache, it was only because it had vacated her chest.


	5. Chapter 5

Within two weeks, Aerith fell completely mute. A stony glare was her only response to any attempt at interaction, from recorded interviews and mako exposure tests to Lucrecia’s stilted, one-sided conversation over meals.

Lucrecia kept trying. She kept failing, but she kept trying all the same. Each night, she returned a little more despondent to her bedroom and held Sephiroth’s battered charm in her palm while she failed to sleep as well. He’d stolen a piece of her, somehow, and carried it across the world with him through fire and bloodshed. He might have asked. She might have known. How much would that have changed; everything? She rose every morning restless and exhausted, and laughed bitterly to realise that she felt about motherhood the same way she’d felt about everything else in the world: that it was impossible to ever know enough to understand _anything_.

“Aerith,” she sighed one morning over a breakfast neither of them bothered eating. “He’s all grown now.” _No_. “He’s allowed to make his own choices.” _No_. “He doesn’t have to be here if he doesn’t want to, and there’s no use in wasting away about it.” _No, no, no_.

Aerith stared at her with eyes that were as hard and glittering as the materia whose color they so resembled. Her brows drew down into a scowl and the corners of her lips pinched tight. “ _No_ ,” she said, as she stood and left.

Lucrecia gazed sightlessly at the table and felt very peculiar indeed.

 

* * *

 

The Promised Land Project ground to a halt.

Somehow, it had survived the loss of its competent geneticist to a Turk with a malfunctioning conscience and sense of duty. It had survived the loss of its supervising anthropologist, to an Ancient that thought nothing of telling him to ‘destroy the research samples.’ It had survived a decade of Shinra’s inconsistent and contradictory demands. It had survived the loss of a ‘research sample’ to the military and Shinra’s greed, a senseless waste of _her son’s_ life and potential. But now, it had lost Aerith’s cooperation. Lucrecia lost her concentration.

And finally, Shinra lost his patience.

 

* * *

 

Lucrecia had been called on the carpet so many times over the years that the experience had lost all novelty. All she had left was a sort of bored dread. Shinra would puff and bellow with no regard for how science or reality worked, and when he finished she would go back to her office and carry on exactly as she had been. Nothing good came of trying to rush progress.

Aerith, though… To have Aerith called along as well, that was new.

“I’m shutting the whole damn thing down!” Shinra barked without preamble, as soon as Lucrecia had eased the office door closed behind them.

Aerith, dull-eyed beside her, didn’t even twitch – well… not at Shinra.

Behind him, a few feet to the side and as imposing and immobile as a monument, was Sephiroth. Lucrecia studied every detail, rapidly and greedily. His chin was up and his face calmly – falsely – proud, but his eyes were cast to the rug in front of the desk. The corners of his mouth were downturned, almost slack. He looked exhausted. He looked… Grief squeezed her heart. He looked very like the man she’d tried so desperately to prevent him from becoming.

Aerith hissed through her teeth.

“Did you hear me, Crescent?” Shinra demanded. He punctuated himself with a fist slammed on his desk, that set the lit cigar in his ashtray rattling. “I’m cutting you off! You’ve wasted my money playing house long enough! If the girl won’t be useful, the girl will be disposed of!”

Lucrecia narrowed her eyes. And Sephiroth… Sephiroth’s eyes flicked over to Shinra. His left hand, hidden from their corporate overlord behind his body, clenched into a tight fist.

“I am not _playing house_ ,” Lucrecia said, her tone defiantly even. “No matter how special, they–” no, not _they_ , not anymore “– _Aerith_ is still just a child. Children require raising.”

“Children require raising,” Shinra parroted back at her, syrupy and mocking. “Children require a firm hand and a quick kick in the ass to launch them into the real world; and _company assets_ , which is what we’re really discussing, are required to justify their costs and turn me a profit. I let you keep that one too long, you’ve spoiled it.”

It. _It_. She’d spoiled _it_ , as if Aerith was an object, a thing. Lucrecia felt her shoulders tightening with a rising rage. “Sir–”

“Sephiroth!” Shinra cut her off. “Are you a little boy? Do you need raising?”

No, he wasn’t and he didn’t. He was going to be eighteen in a matter of weeks, and she’d barely seen him since he was twelve. Didn’t this useless idiot understand that that was the entire problem?

“No, sir,” Sephiroth said without changing his expression or raising his eyes from the ground. His voice, if it were possible, had settled even deeper since she’d last heard it. Deeper and sadder. “I am a SOLDIER.”

“And what is your purpose, SOLDIER?”

Sephiroth blinked, the most expression he’d allowed himself this entire time. “Whatever you ask of me, sir.”

“You see,” Shinra said.

Lucrecia wanted to slap the sneer off his snide, superior face.

“You see. Heidegger and I, we fixed this one. Took us long enough. Always snivelling for his mommy when he thought no one was looking. Ha!” he barked, disgustingly pleased with himself. “No, we taught him. A man doesn’t need a mother.”

Lucrecia ground her heel into the expensive carpet. She reached for Aerith, who still stood limp and dull-eyed next to her. Aerith didn’t resist. Her hand hung as clammy and heavy as a corpse’s in Lucrecia’s shaking grasp.

Shinra puffed at his cigar and smirked. So smug. “And apparently, all these little experiments of ours are good for is fighting. An army doesn’t need a woman…” He paused, and chuckled to himself in a timbre that made Lucrecia’s skin crawl. “Well. Not for _fighting_.”

Lucrecia vividly remembered the day Sephiroth damned himself. The flash of motion, the unexpected strength, the blood and the screaming and the jagged shattered end of the snapped-off scalpel. She wished she was holding it now. She would teach Shinra a lesson about women and fighting.

“ _Sir_ ,” she said – not calmly, for there was now no force on the planet capable of completely containing her rage, but she still _said_ it, still refused to give him the tears and fury he wanted from her. No. She would never let a man goad her that far again, not when lives depended on it. She took a breath to steady her voice. “Sir. This is a drastic and short-sighted course of action, and I would ask you to reconsider it for the company’s benefit.”

“For the company’s benefit,” Shinra mocked. “No, I don’t think so. I’ve indulged your little fancies long enough, _Miss Crescent_. Hollander says he’s cracked your silly code, and he’s brought his boys back to prove it. This damned department–”

“It won’t get you the Promised Land.”

Aerith’s high, sharp voice cut through the room and left ringing silence in its wake.

“Little girl,” Shinra started, red in the face.

“That’s where you want to go, isn’t it?” Aerith was still stony-faced, unbent before Shinra’s rage. She pulled her hand out of Lucrecia’s sweat-slick grasp. “Although no one will tell me why.”

Behind Shinra, Sephiroth stood a little taller, a little tenser.

“It doesn’t matter _why_ ,” Shinra sneered. “What matters is that I get what I want.”

Aerith merely blinked. “How is anyone supposed to get you what you want, without first understanding what it is?”

Shinra slammed his hands down and clenched white-knuckled fists at the edge of his overly-polished desk. His cigar dangled precariously from his lips, a twitch from setting something ablaze. “Mako, you stupid girl! That’s what the stories say, that the Promised Land is full of mako!”

Sephiroth closed his eyes. His face became a mask of apprehension. Almost undetectably, he shook his head, tiny twitchy movements that may have been involuntary.

Lucrecia… felt unreal. She may have stepped out of her body at any moment. Events were beginning to merely wash past her, with her mind not present enough to have a reaction.

Aerith tapped her finger against her lips, as though she was the adult in the room. “Mako. Someone should have said.”

Sephiroth opened his mouth and closed it again, stricken. A SOLDIER had no voice, not in this room. A SOLDIER did not think or speak for himself.

“That answer is easy enough,” Aerith continued. “If you want mako… then make me like Sephiroth.”

Shinra eyed her: the matching eyes, the steel-grey hair. She was as like to Sephiroth as any creature could be, down to her very genetics. That had been the point of her.

Aerith squared her thin shoulders and stood a little taller. Sephiroth hunched into himself as though his spine had collapsed.

“Make me a SOLDIER too.”

There was a moment of silence, before Shinra burst into derisive laughter. “Make _you_ a SOLDIER? A little slip of a–”

“Do I have to kill someone too?” Aerith asked sweetly, and–

And.

Lucrecia’s mouth went dry.

Pens, a letter opener, the cigar cutter – every sharp implement _formerly_ on Shinra’s desk lifted itself into the air as if on invisible strings and spun around to face, point first, at the red-faced tyrant.

“ _You_ –” Shinra choked. “Sephiroth!”

Sephiroth was utterly still. “You want to go to the Promised Land…” he mused.

“Make me a SOLDIER,” Aerith repeated. “And someday you’ll get there.”

“ _Sephiroth!_ ” There were little beads of sweat forming on Shinra’s face.

Sephiroth crossed slowly around the desk; an unhurried, swaying tread on catlike, near-silent feet. He knelt before Aerith. He glanced up, so very briefly, at Lucrecia, and then he took both of Aerith’s hands in his own.

The letter opener flipped in midair.  It wobbled and swayed in their direction.

Aerith was flushed, feverish, and trembling.

“Blossom,” Sephiroth said, barely above a whisper.

Aerith gasped and shrieked. Everything clattered back down onto, and then off of, Shinra’s desk. Everything except…

Lucrecia stared down at the letter opener, red-pointed and fallen at her feet.

Sephiroth raised his head, and revealed a long, straight slice on his face, following the line of his cheekbone. “...Yes,” he said. His voice was so heavy, he may have just agreed to his own execution. “Say yes. Let her be a SOLDIER.”

Shinra stared. He stared at Aerith, who had her eyes clenched shut and was shaking violently. He stared at Sephiroth, calm and resigned and bloodied. He stared at Lucrecia, who could not think and could not react and could just barely hear the distant echo of her own voice in her head, shouting that later she would be insensately furious, instead of merely insensate.

“Fine,” Shinra grunted. “Fine. If I’ll get some use out of her, she can damn well try. Now get the hell out of my office.”

Sephiroth stood, and shepherded them both out. Lucrecia glanced back over his arm, and caught one last sight of Shinra. He was slugging his 21 year old whiskey out of the decanter.

 

* * *

 

Lucrecia came out of her daze in her own apartment, sitting on her own couch. She was holding a warm cup of mint tea. Aerith sat on the floor at her feet, resting her grey-haired head against Lucrecia’s knee. She was trembling faintly. Or… Lucrecia was trembling faintly.

They both were trembling faintly.

There was water running in the kitchen.

“Blossom?” Lucrecia murmured.

Aerith hid her face and clung tightly to her legs.

The water shut off.

Aerith clung tighter.

Sephiroth appeared just at the periphery of her vision. He slid a tray onto the coffee table: two bowls of soup, a glass of juice, a glass of water… and a saucer containing the evening doses of Lucrecia’s multiple medications. She blinked up at him.

He intently studied the baseboards in the corner of the room. “If you’ve recovered, doctor, I’ll excuse my–”

He never got to finish. Aerith launched herself from the floor and collided with his chest. Her bony little fists flew, pummeling any part of him she could reach. He reared back and jerked his chin up out of range. His hair fell away from his face and revealed his cheek, still with a line of crusted blood slashed across it.

Lucrecia was, for a moment, utterly stunned. “ _Aerith_ ,” she snapped. “We do not react with violence in this household!”

Sephiroth flinched, just a flicker of a pained expression that was there and gone again across his face.

Lucrecia’s hand flew up to cover her mouth so quickly she almost fumbled her tea.

Aerith froze, both of her hands still raised while her shoulders hunched over.

“Aerith, go to your room,” Lucrecia ordered despite her quavering voice.

“Mom,” Aerith half-sobbed.

Lucrecia pointed down the hall. “Go.”

Sephiroth straightened his coat out while Aerith slunk away. He was still fascinated by the baseboards. “I… apologize, doctor. I’ll–”

“ _Sephiroth,_ ” Lucrecia half-sobbed herself. “I am your _mother_. What did I do wrong?”

Sephiroth froze. Every line of him drew up as rigid as a startled alley cat. Soundlessly, his mouth formed a few non-words, until… “Cameras,” he blurted out in a tight, pained voice.

“...Cameras?”

Sephiroth’s eyes flicked to the corners of the room again, along the lines of the ceiling. Lucrecia couldn’t understand what he–

– _Cameras_. There was a camera mounted in almost every room in the science department, for security footage or for ease of recording experiments and procedures. One learned to ignore them, if they didn’t want to go mad with paranoia. Shinra’s words floated like an oily film across the top of her memory: _always snivelling for his mommy, we fixed him, man doesn’t need a mother_.

Lucrecia put her tea down on the table, heedless of the way it slopped over the sides of the mug. “Baby, what did they do to you?”

Sephiroth took a step backward, and wrapped his arms tightly around himself. “I knew why you were crying,” he said.

His voice was rough, but also detached. Recognition was a sharp pain in Lucrecia’s heart; Sephiroth had never heard his father’s voice, and she could never quite manage to forget it. She stepped toward him, one tea-dampened hand outstretched.

He stepped back. “I couldn’t even open the door and apologize. Aerith was the better specimen. I’m just a violent failure, and now I’ve ruined her too.”

Ruined. Suddenly, Lucrecia wondered… how many times had she told her boy to be cooperative, not to fight, that there was no excuse for hurting someone? But Sephiroth had only managed to justify his existence to Shinra by killing a man. Shinra had never cared that he was observant and clever, or sensitive, or so absurdly good at training their lab animals that Lucrecia wanted to open a second line of research. Shinra only cared that he was big, and strong, and deadly, while his mother desperately tried to convince him that none of those were something to be proud of.

She took another step forward, still reaching for him. He took another long-legged step back. Only a couple more of those and he’d hit the wall, or the door. She turned her palm up and stood there, still as she could be.

“You are not a _specimen_ ,” she said. “Or a company asset, or a failure. You are my son. And there is nothing you or anyone else can do to change that.”

Not even if he’d grown into a man that killed children and razed a village, she realized with a shock. She understood how Shinra operated. He already _had_ , there was no question. He already had, but she didn’t see a monster in the shape of a man standing there. She saw her baby boy, sad and scared and lonely.

“Baby,” she pleaded, before she stopped and corrected herself. “ _Sephiroth_. If you can’t let me be your mother, at least let me be your doctor. Sit down so I can clean up your face.”

The tension left him in gradual degrees until he finally nodded, more of a surrender than anything.

Lucrecia nodded as well. She took a deep breath and, in a show of trust she hoped he understood, left him unwatched while she went to gather her things. If he wasn’t there when she came back… she didn’t know if she had any tears left, but she’d learn.

He was there. He perched on the couch, ready to bolt at any moment; but he was still there. He’d pulled the armor off of his uniform, probably to give her someplace comfortable to rest her arm while she worked.

She eased herself onto the couch beside him, and sat at an angle to give him as much room as she could manage – not an easy feat. He took up a great deal more space than he did as a gangly-limbed twelve year old, when they could all sit on this old thing with room to spare… although that may have been because Aerith mostly sat on him.

He inhaled sharply at the first touch of the damp cloth to his cheek; so sharply that his chest and shoulders jerked. As gently as she could, she braced his chin with her free hand. He stared at the floor, a tiny frown creasing only his brow.

She’d learned from the last time. She didn’t attempt to speak, or to hug him, or show him any kind of affection at all. She only held him steady while she dampened the dried crust on his face until it came free. So slowly she wouldn’t have noticed it if she hadn’t been searching for any reaction at all, he rested more and more weight on the hand holding his chin. She kept dabbing at the superficial little scratch on his cheek long after it was clean.

One low, doleful moan escaped his control.

That was all the warning Lucrecia got before he collapsed into her arms, despite being much too large for her to hold now. He buried his face in the crook of her neck. She would never have heard his sniffles otherwise, though she could feel his shoulders shaking and his ribs heaving with unvoiced sobs.

Her poor, broken baby.

“Shhh,” she soothed as she stroked his back. “Shhhh.”

She toed her pumps off and curled her legs underneath her, so she could pull him closer. He’d never cried very much when he was younger. She could count the number of times she’d had to rock and console him on her fingers, once he was out of infancy.

His fingers clutched at her shirt, and he gasped and choked for breath.

“Shhhh, my darling.” She combed her fingers through his hair. “Shhh. It’s alright. You’re home now. Mother’s here, darling.”

He only ever seemed to take after her weaknesses – his sobs showed no sign of abating.

“Shhh. Shhhh.”

Aerith appeared at some point. Lucrecia regarded her, weary, red-eyed and silent. She freed one hand from Sephiroth’s feeble grip and pressed a finger over her lips. Aerith nodded and padded away. She reappeared some moments later, with a blanket that used to go on Sephiroth’s bed. Lucrecia tucked it around them as best she could. It was much too small, now.

She stroked her hand over the back of Sephiroth’s head. “Shhh. Shhhh.”

 

* * *

 

Lucrecia awoke to late morning light, an ache in all of her joints, and a weight like lead in her lap.

She blinked blearily.

The weight in her lap snuffled and shifted. It was Sephiroth, using her legs as a pillow. The rest of him failed to fit on the couch along with her. He was an ungainly sprawl of rumpled uniform and long limbs. One of his feet was bare. The other boot was half undone and halfway down his leg, with one of Aerith’s ancient stuffed toys jammed down the top.

Lucrecia pressed her fingers to her lips to keep the tiny laugh in. A dim recollection floated to the surface of her memory, just Aerith’s exasperated whisper of, “ugh, _fine_ , keep it on, jerk.”

Her hair had fallen down sometime during the night. Sephiroth had one hand tangled in the ends and pressed to his face.

Somewhere in the apartment, her phone rang shrilly. Sephiroth’s eyelids fluttered at the noise.

She ran a hand over his static-wild hair. “Shhh. Shhh.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this seemed to take an age to write. I don't anticipate such a delay with the rest of the chapters; I always knew this was going to be the hard one.


	6. Chapter 6

It took two months to make a SOLDIER, from intake to medical release.

Aerith had been in conversion for nearly a year. New snide comments were made every month she ‘failed’ to be released for training. Shinra should have paid closer attention.

Aerith didn’t want to be a SOLDIER.

That was for the best. Lucrecia didn’t want her to be a SOLDIER either.

Aerith wanted to be _like Sephiroth_.

Stronger than the others, faster than the others, frankly, far more skilled and intelligent than the others. There were worse things Aerith could want for herself, Lucrecia reasoned. She already had a target on her back. It was better to live in reality and give her every advantage possible… and, admittedly, to embark on a lengthy process that may yet keep her out of any real combat.

Aerith stood stone-still in her hospital gown while Lucrecia traced a line in wax pencil around the mask being held to her face. They were both breathing shallowly; the mako saturating the air burnt at the lining of their lungs. Most people had to enter this room wearing a respirator. Lucrecia, still carrying with her some after-effects from carrying Sephiroth, felt only minor discomfort.

And Sephiroth, leaning slouched against the supply cabinet against the back wall, breathed the mako fumes as readily as if they were fresh mountain air.

Lucrecia pulled the mask away from Aerith’s face and began applying a layer of grease inside her pencil lines.

Aerith released one long, shaky breath and quivered with the effort of not fidgeting any further.

“It doesn’t hurt, Blossom,” Sephiroth said. “It’s warm. It tingles. You’ll like it.”

“You said I’d like beets.” Aerith scowled at him over Lucrecia’s hand, which was smearing grease over the bridge of her nose.

“You do like beets.” Lucrecia couldn’t see Sephiroth, but she could hear the smile in his voice. “But Mother hates them so you pretend not to for her sake.”

Aerith’s mouth formed into a little round ‘ _oh_ ’ of surprise that quickly collapsed into a pout.

Lucrecia held the respirator mask up to her face, before she could start in on Sephiroth’s eating habits, hygiene, and general intelligence. “It will be just fine,” she soothed, while she snapped the head harness onto its connection points. “We wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”

No, they wouldn’t do anything to hurt her. That’s why she was about to be put into a pressure pod and submerged in mako at high concentrations. At least the design had been improved, and they weren’t stuffing her into one of the old pods. More interior space, a mostly windowed door, a panic alarm that could be activated from inside... Even still, Sephiroth had to go first in a water-only run to prove she wasn’t going to drown.

Aerith blinked and nodded. All the tubes attached to her rattled and clattered together. Her little puffs of breath fogged the inside of her mask.

Sephiroth pushed himself off of the cabinet and approached. His hair was still dripping sluggishly at the very ends, a _pit-pat_ of water that was more audible than his footsteps. He held out a hand to Aerith, and when she took it, he tugged her to him and grabbed her around the waist. She was lifted and deposited into the pod before she could even conceive of having second thoughts.

Aerith’s wide green eyes were terror-struck. She clutched at Sephiroth’s hair, and the oxygen monitor clattered off of her finger and onto the perforated metal bottom of the tank. Sephiroth retrieved it and replaced it, murmuring something Lucrecia couldn’t hear.

She thought it might be best to let him handle it – she had only ever put people in these pods, not gone in one herself.

She had an intense bout of second thoughts herself when he stepped back and _slammed the door closed with no warning_.

“Are you _trying_ to scare her out of her wits?!” she demanded.

“She’s scaring herself over nothing,” Sephiroth said, perfectly calmly. He continued to turn the valve on the pressure lock.

And, when Lucrecia stepped to the side to see around him, she saw that Aerith was so offended by his brusque dismissal that she’d entirely forgotten to be fearful.

“And you’re sure we shouldn’t have…”

There was a combination sedative and mild paralytic given to men that went into the mako showers – the _showers_ , nevermind full submergence – to keep them from thrashing and injuring themselves.

They’d administered it to Sephiroth once. He was quite adamant after that, never again.

“I suppose it feels different for humans,” he said softly, and hit the button to start filling the tank.

Lucrecia was taken aback. She’d made it a point to never hide the… broader, less upsetting details of his birth from Sephiroth: that he was a product of gene splicing, that those samples came from the remains of a preserved Cetra, that they’d been working to revive a dead or dying people. He knew these things, as soon as she felt he was old enough to understand them.

But he’d never referred to himself as _not human_ before.

“Different for…?” she started.

“They say it burns.” He stared straight ahead, at Aerith.

She looked, momentarily, furious and betrayed behind the thick plastic viewport; but as the mako oozed over the tops of her feet and up her legs that expression transformed into first confusion, and then… contentment. Certainly not a feeling Lucrecia had ever associated with mako infusion before.

“It does,” she said. She tapped a finger against her lips, only half aware of the action.

“Not for us,” he whispered. He pressed one hand to the window, despite the fact that Aerith had closed her eyes and took no notice, and stood that way until the pod was full.

The mako cast strange rippling highlights across his skin. In the pod, Aerith floated, head bowed and legs slightly bent. Her hair swayed in every tiny current. A peculiar chill crawled up Lucrecia’s spine – this moment was important, she knew, though she could not say why.

Sephiroth sighed and stepped back. His hand fell limply to his side.

“Are you—?” Lucrecia started, before he turned to look at her with a strange, sad expression. Her voice died in her throat.

A SOLDIER moved fast. She knew this, had baseline times and averages and charts of data; she had not _understood_ it until now. In the time it took her to blink perhaps twice, Sephiroth crossed the space between them and folded her into a hug.

He was head and shoulders taller than her, bigger and broader than… than his father could ever have hoped to be. Some days, she still felt a moment of confusion at seeing him all grown up.

She reached up and patted his arm. “There are cameras,” she whispered to him.

“I don’t care,” he murmured back.

He did care. His spine was stiff and the muscles in his arms were trembling. He cared, but he was trying so hard.

She hugged him back, tight around his waist and a pat between his shoulderblades. “She’ll be in there for hours. Are you too old to help me with the rats?”

He chuckled and stepped back. “I will never be too old to help you with the rats, Mother.”

 

* * *

 

Lucrecia stopped writing abruptly, as all the words on the page blurred and swam before her. The pen slipped out of her grip. She raised an unsteady hand to her temple. Again? She must not be getting enough sleep lately, with all the worry about Aerith.

Aerith.

She was in for her third full-submergence infusion today. The previous two had been uneventful,  mostly, if one did not count the… behavioral abnormalities that followed. That they occurred was not unexpected. After infusion, Sephiroth was prone to long periods of stillness and unsettling staring, as well as mercurial shifts in opinion toward individuals for no defined reason at all. Prepared for more of the same, Lucrecia put a quiet, dark room aside for Aerith to recover in. Aerith came out of the pod with a desire to run up and down every staircase in the building, four steps at a time, and carry on long philosophical conversations regardless of whether there was another person present to participate.

Sephiroth was now officially on duty in the labs on infusion days, as the only one who possessed _both_ the willingness to indulge her and the stamina to keep up with her.  While waiting for her to come out of the pod, he often took it upon himself to do other things – like go stare at the most junior research assistant until a cup of tea just happened to occur.

“Jasmine today,” he announced as he shouldered open the door of her office, tea in one hand and a rat curled up in the other.

Lucrecia blinked. “The tea, or the rat?” she asked, still feeling a bit dizzy and vague.

“Both.” He put the tea on her desk, and offered his newly free hand to the rat.

Of course, Lucrecia thought. Sephiroth’s favorite, Jasmine; or as she was more properly known, JENOVA Specimen, M litter, individual ID ‘3N’, a specimen from her study on the behavioral effects of JENOVA virus exposure. The first study had to be discontinued. The fellow given charge decided to eliminate variables by eliminating environmental variations like socialization and bedding; control or otherwise, all of the animals were maladjusted to the point of being deranged. Lucrecia decided to eliminate the research fellow for potentially exhibiting the same symptoms.

Jasmine waddled from Sephiroth’s right hand to his left and snuffled at the air. He stroked a finger over her head, his face relaxed into a gentle smile.

Lucrecia picked up her tea and blew over the top, to hide the ripples from her unsteady hands. “They don’t respond that way to anyone else. Aren’t you ever going to share your secret with me?”

Sephiroth’s smile took on a mischievous edge. Jasmine scampered up his arm and across his shoulder to hide under his hair. He shrugged the shoulder that didn’t have a rat on it. “I’m special.”

“‘I’m special’ is a very unscientific answer, young man.”

Jasmine poked her head out from the curtain of Sephiroth’s hair, her beady little red eyes shining with the reflection of the overhead lights.

“Is it?” Sephiroth asked, and offered the rat a hand down from his shoulder.

Lucrecia sipped her tea, and thought.

 

* * *

 

 

“You could have gone further,” Sephiroth announced into the previously companionable silence, while they waited for Aerith to finish her fourth infusion.

Lucrecia spotted ink onto the page of medical records she was reviewing – his – and looked up, puzzled. “With what, precisely?”

Sephiroth tilted his head and studied her in the manner that so unnerved her staff. It unnerved her too, but for very different reasons: she recognized the gesture from another time, and another face. “With me – my mako levels. It never hurt me. I only got stronger. Why did you stop?”

She set her pen down. “You know perfectly well that I never wanted to start, beyond your maintenance doses.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “But you did. So why did you stop?”

“You were already the strongest and fastest of the SOLDIER candidates. What point was there in going further than that?”

He leaned into the back of her visitor chair, and stared at the ceiling. “Aerith is going to be ready soon, and there’s still fighting in Wutai. Heidegger’s men are undisciplined. If I didn’t have to work with them… I could end the war myself.”

End the war himself – _fight_ the war himself, was what he meant. One man, stronger than an army. Lucrecia shivered against the sense-memory of imagined flames, though it was finally growing weaker. “It’s not safe,” she said. “We don’t _know_ the upper limit of your mako tolerance, so there’s no way to know if we’re approaching it. Mako mutation is not a reversible process, Sephiroth.”

“There are ways to test it,” he argued. “You know there are, and this is important. We want the same thing, and that’s what I can do to help. Why won’t you just let me do it?”

Lucrecia sat back in her chair, stunned into silence. She recognized someone else in Sephiroth on a heartbreakingly regular basis. This was the first time she’d truly recognized _herself_.

“I… If you’d consent to some samples… And I don’t mean a cheek swab, Sephiroth. I’ll need muscle and organ tissues. Bone marrow. The old cultures won’t do, I need to see your current state. If you let me run some saturation tests first, _and_ I don’t find any abnormalities…”

He stared at her, unblinking, with his beautiful cat-slit eyes.

“…If you agree to that, I’ll agree to further infusion.”

“Yes.”

Of course, yes. Why would she ever expect _her_ son to say no?

 

* * *

 

 

A week after Aerith’s fourth time in the mako pod, they were all summoned down to the barracks and training ground in shadow of the tower. Shinra himself was waiting for them, with an escort of two Turks – Veld, did it _have_ to be Veld? – and…

_Hollander_.

Lucrecia sighed.

But not just Hollander; behind him, two boys in standard SOLDIER uniform, one with vibrantly red hair, and one… well. Some tendencies were apparently shared by all branches of the project.

On either side of her, Sephiroth and Aerith drew a little closer and stood a little taller – particularly Aerith, who’d been growing at a rate of inches a week on her mako regimen. She used to be eye-level with the lower end of Sephiroth’s sternum. She was going to reach his chin soon, at her current rate. She was just a little closer than normal. Sephiroth stood with his shoulders uncharacteristically lax, his left hand holding his sword and his right curled protectively over his middle.

“And where’s Gillian?” she asked Hollander by way of non-greeting.

He flinched. The dark-haired boy behind him clenched his teeth so tightly, she could see the tension in his jaw.

“She got in the way,” Hollander said, failing to meet her eyes. “You’d know all about that, Lu.”

The redhead – smaller, slighter – put his hand on the darker one’s shoulder, and was angrily shrugged off.

“Yes, pity,” Shinra said, his tone making it quite clear that he didn’t care at all. “Now. These are Hollander’s boys, Crescent.”

“Genesis.” Hollander gestured to the redhead. (Behind him, Shinra scowled at being interrupted; she was truly amazed he’d lasted this long.) “And…” He hesitated over the broad, dark-haired boy that so resembled his parents. “ And Angeal.”

“Yes,” Shinra said flatly. “Well, boys, I’m sure you recognize Sephiroth. This is Lucrecia Crescent, our current science director—” _current_ director, always _current_ director, as if she could be so easily replaced “—and… eh. The girl doesn’t matter.”

Lucrecia heard Aerith grind her teeth.

“Now, the boys have been going through a modified version of the SOLDIER program, testing some improvements,” Shinra continued. Improvements like cutting her out, he meant. “And I think it’s time to see how that’s really going. You boys don’t mind having a little spar with Sephiroth, do you? Of course not,” he chortled to himself. “Every boy’s dream, to fight with Sephiroth.”

“Sir.” Lucrecia was waiting for the day when she finally snapped her pen in half, she truly was. “Sephiroth _cannot_ spar today.”

“Crescent, I appreciate your motherly concern,” Shinra sneered, “but I just told the boy to fight and he is going to fight.”

The boy – Angeal – looked taken aback at the word ‘motherly’. His attention shifted back and forth between Lucrecia and Sephiroth, his expression confused and conflicted.

Lucrecia sighed. “He is recovering from surgery. At his rate of healing, I can estimate that if you’d like to reschedule this demonstration in a week’s time—”

“Let Aerith do it.” Sephiroth’s quiet, deep voice was still perfectly audible over hers. Everyone turned to look at him. “She’s as good a test as I am.”

“I’m not fighting a little girl!” Angeal growled more than said. “If you think for _one moment_ I’m going to—” Hollander grabbed him by both shoulders, and struggled to drag him back.

“A very amusing little joke, Sephiroth,” Shinra said, arms crossed. “But we’re discussing serious business at the moment.”

“I have only ever acted for the good of the company, sir,” Sephiroth told him, his eyes lowered in what Lucrecia was learning to recognize as _feigned_ , unwilling submission. “Aerith can test them. She’s only halfway through the process… it would be a fairer match. If they can’t best a ‘little girl’—” he glanced sideways at Aerith, apologetic “—then what worth are they to SOLDIER?”

“I… I’ll do it.” The redhead – Genesis, right – stepped forward. He was trying to draw attention away from his fellow, Lucrecia realized. “As a spot of entertainment for you, Mr President? A short break in your busy day? I’ve been doing quite well with my materia. Perhaps the young lady would like a chance to practice her own?”

Aerith eyed him like a new specimen of drain sludge.

A thirteen year old girl, fighting a young man six years her senior. Who would ever agree to that? Shinra, Lucrecia realized. Shinra would agree to that. He regretted ever letting her keep Sephiroth, and allowing his pet project to form bonds of loyalty to someone other than him. He regretted letting Gast escape with a natural-born Cetra. And he certainly regretted allowing her to keep Aerith, who motivated both her and Sephiroth to near-insubordination by her mere existence. He would enjoy nothing more than to see Aerith embarrassed, if he couldn’t see her disposed of.

She had to assume that Sephiroth was even more clever than she’d given him credit for. To think otherwise was to admit this was going to end in disaster.

“Yes, yes,” Shinra said, sounding inordinately pleased. “ _Practice_. I do like to see how my SOLDIERs are doing!” Which he hadn’t regarding Aerith, of course, beyond her reports of ‘not ready, still developing.’

Hollander managed to pull his boy Angeal to the side of the ring where Shinra stood with his Turk shadows. Sephiroth draped his arm around her shoulder to lead her the same way. They’d gone several steps before she realized she’d replaced his hand curled around his belly with her own. She started to remove it, and he hugged her shoulder tighter.

Aerith looked much smaller than she actually was, standing alone in her frilled blouse and her puffy shorts, with her hair ribbon crooked and one sock falling down.

Genesis stepped forward and held out his wrist to her, pointing to the bangle he wore on it with his other hand. “Now, I have a fire, a seal, and a cure.” He tapped each slotted materia in turn. “And what have you been working with?”

Lucrecia gave him credit. He was attempting to be a gentleman about this, at least. She glanced up at Sephiroth, who still had a heavy – restraining – arm slung about her shoulder. He was wearing a smug little smirk.

“Nothing,” Aerith said, clearly and confidently.

Genesis took a step back. He turned, hesitant, to the group gathered on the sidelines.

“If the brat wants to fight with nothing, you fight her!” Shinra barked.

Angeal shifted about, furious and discontent. Lucrecia squeezed Sephiroth’s side to draw his attention, and gestured as discreetly as she could. That boy – that poor boy. He was going to be trouble.

“I won’t need anything,” Aerith insisted, simultaneously sweet and cocky. “You can go first.”

Lucrecia didn’t know what she was expecting. A show of agility? Of endurance?

Genesis glanced their way again, obviously looking to be told ‘nevermind, boy.’ His reprieve didn’t come.

He tossed a half-hearted little gout of fire at Aerith, the sort of flames recruits used in their introductory training. He didn’t want to hurt her, that much was obvious.

Aerith had no such compunctions.

She sidestepped the pitiful wisp of flame as neatly as if she were dancing. No more than a gesture of her hand, and Genesis fell to his knees.

He fumbled clumsily at his bangled wrist – but he couldn’t move, and he couldn’t cast.

_Someone_ cast, though. Flames engulfed his hand, and he yelped and whimpered. The bangle clattered away from him into the empty space between them. He’d managed to fling it off.

Aerith stepped forward, and it floated up into her hand.

“Materia,” she announced to the shocked silence, “is the crystallized knowledge of the Cetra, which allows _humans_ to use the Planet’s power. Why would _I_ ever need materia?”

Genesis, still crouched on the dusty pavement, had joined Angeal in his rage.

Shinra chuckled, lowly. It drove a chill up Lucrecia’s spine.

“Well, well,” he chortled to himself. “Well, well, well. Seems you’ve got some potential after all, Miss Faremis.”

Hollander was thunderstruck – apparently, he’d never quite realized. Veld stared straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge anything to do with Lucrecia as he had for the last two decades. Veld’s rookie – dark haired, handsome, and surprisingly Wutaian – stared at the floor and attempted to hide a faint flush under a veneer of professionalism.

Lucrecia spared a glance up at Sephiroth. He was still wearing that little smirk. Out of everyone present… he wasn’t surprised at all.


End file.
